


Dear Angel

by Kari_Kurofai



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-21
Updated: 2011-11-21
Packaged: 2017-10-26 09:14:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/281312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kari_Kurofai/pseuds/Kari_Kurofai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Spoilers for 7x01. Somewhere in the darkness a baby cries. Gabriel is the only one around to hear it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dear Angel

**Dear Angel**

_Somewhere in the darkness a baby cries. Gabriel is the only one around to hear it._   


Somewhere in the darkness a baby cries. At first he thinks he’s imagining it because no sound like that could exist between the snaking coils of the Leviathan, no life can coexist with it. None but him, anyways. He’s the only one that can kill it.

Gabriel reaches up with a hand, chuckling as his fingers brush against the scales of the Leviathan that curls all around the darkness. His hand touches one wind of its body as he perches upon another, his knees pulled up to his chest and his chin in his hand. People forget that angels have to go somewhere when they die, too. Nothing stops existing, it just moves on. Gabriel still remembers the light when the gates of Purgatory opened, the shining ray of freedom that disappeared as every soul in the abyss was sucked out, including himself. It wasn’t long before the gates were opened again, this time to put back what had been taken. But the Leviathan didn’t budge, it clung to every fiber of their host’s being and held on. So Gabriel did too. It’s not like he had anything better to do, being dead and all. 

The cry comes again and Gabriel looks up. When he stands he instinctively tries to stretch his wings, to spread them and give them a beat. It’s an instinct that does nothing but remind him that he doesn’t have wings anymore as he feels nothing but empty air across his shoulder blades. His wings are just ashes on a bloodstained hotel floor now. So he stretches his arms instead just to make up for the awkward looking movement, not that there was anyone around to see it. 

Navigating the Leviathan’s coils is like walking a complicated maze. Gabriel climbs over some and ducks under others, over and around, his hands in front of him in the darkness to catch himself if he falls because, honestly, without his wings he’s as useless as a mortal human. He pauses when he hears the cry again, closer this time and most definitely that of an infant, and turns towards the noise. Even in the darkness he doesn’t miss the shape, the baby tangled up in an oversized trench coat amidst the squirming coils of the Leviathan. Gabriel wishes he could fly then, to get to the child faster than his deadweight legs can carry him as he runs to it, but he can’t. 

He trips across the darkness and falls to his knees beside the infant, bundling it up in the bloodstained trench coat and holding it in his arms. “No,” he whispers to no one but himself. “What have you done?”

The baby squirms, sobbing brokenly in his arms, and Gabriel holds it against his chest. He presses his nose to the crown of the child’s head, making a soft shushing noise in the back of his throat. He knows this child, knows the blue of his eyes when he looks up at him, knows his cries because he’s held him in his arms before, long ago when fledglings were still born in the skies of Heaven. “Castiel,” he whispers as he cradles the child to him, “What have you done?”

After awhile the baby stops crying and Gabriel balances him on his lap, swaddled up in the stained trench coat. “Look at you,” the archangel scolds quietly, “Making a mess of things again. You were always the stubborn one, weren’t you.” He tilts his head back to stare through the shadows up at the Leviathan, coiling and stretching above and around them. “It’ll be alright,” he whispers, though he’s not sure who he’s reassuring. Castiel grips his thumb with a tiny hand, holding on tight as if it’s the only thing keeping him there, safe, in his brother’s arms. Maybe it is.

After all this little thing, this infant, is all that remains of him, all that has escaped the Leviathan’s all consuming power. 

“We’ll be alright,” Gabriel repeats, pressing his lips to the top of the baby’s head. “I’ve got you now.”

  



End file.
